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Ok ... so Kevin Harvey, Bryan Settle, and myself went to the AMP open house/sales drive/circuit unveiling event held at Hennessy Porsche in Roswell, GA last Thursday.

It was quite the event... very posh with free Grey Goose drinks and lots of eye candy provided by the Grey Goose hostesses (and of course, the hardware in the parking lot!!)

Anyway... my thoughts on the official design:



Seeing as how every track in the Southeast/Mid-Atlantic except for Rockingham is a clockwise configuration, I naturally assumed this would be too. But I was mistaken! One of the first things we found out is that the track is designed for Counter Clockwise use. (1st item of uniqueness)

The next item of interest is the elevation changes... I heard numbers of anywhere from 120' to 140' of overall elevation change through the circuit. Below is a diagram of the topography along the length of the circuit. The green areas are where valleys will have to be filled in, the blue areas are where peaks will have to be lowered... this IS in the north Georgia mountains



They've incorporated aspects unique to our region (long & flowing sweepers) and they've mimicked some other famous turns/complexes, the two main ones are the carousel from the 'ring (which seems a little gimmicky to me) and Au Rouge from Spa (although seemingly a much slower version of it.)

Here are the different configurations planned:



I'm excited about it, even though it's one helluva drive from New Bern... track will be located in Dawsonville, GA... just north of Road Atlanta

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Stacy King
Midlife Crisis Participant

If this is the one where Jr. is an invester it is no wonder it is counterclockwise - they are used to turning left

I haven't heard his name bandied about, but Dawsonville is Bill Elliot's home town if I'm not mistaken

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Stacy King
Midlife Crisis Participant

The topography of the area may have driven the counterclockwise configuration. The elevation changes of the final track will be significantly less than the current elevation changes of the tract of land. The new Tilke design supposedly makes better use of the land and a CCW config may have been one of the reasons.

As Stacy mentioned, we were standing there looking at the track layout and listening to one of the finance guys talk about all the amenities and stuff. I asked something about if the drawing we were viewing also incorporated run-off space because it did not appear that some of the turns had enough. He said yes and ran his hand around the track. Suddenly it made sense that this was a ccw track.

Ahhh, said the blind man! I see!!!

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2003 Torch Red Corvette Z06 ST3/TT3 #01

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